


Let the Bough Break

by sarcasticsra



Series: Lost and Found [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasticsra/pseuds/sarcasticsra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A number goes badly awry, and John tries to deal with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Bough Break

**Author's Note:**

> I had absolutely no idea how to warn for this fic, so I decided to use 'choose not to warn' and put all the warnings in the end note. Said warnings are spoilery, but if you have triggers, I do encourage you to look at them--I don't think it will detract any, and I want you to be safe.
> 
> Title comes from Sara Bareilles' song "I Choose You", which is extremely John-esque. Thanks for the beta, Kelly, even if you are one of the many evil horrible people who encouraged this. (Oro, Kat, I'm also looking at you.)

“I’m en route to the location now,” Harold said, and John gritted his teeth in frustration.

“Harold, get back to the library—Shaw and I can handle this. These people, they’re too dangerous—”

“They’re dangerous and they need to be stopped, Mr. Reese,” Harold said primly. “I’m closer than you are. The place is deserted. We need to retrieve that information before they destroy it.”

“We’re meeting you there,” he said, knowing he wasn’t going to convince Harold when he was using that tone. They were going to have a long talk about following basic safety protocol after this case, though—not that it would probably do much.

“You should have my GPS coordinates,” Harold said, and John pulled out his phone, bringing up the right app. Sure enough, the little dot that signified Harold was moving at a steady clip.

“We need a car,” he said, switching lines so he could talk to Shaw.

“Already got us one,” she said back. “Get down here.”

He met her in the parking garage, where she pulled up in a dark blue Lexus. “Harold’s on his way. We’re meeting him there,” he said, showing her the coordinates on his phone.

“You let him go into the field?” she asked, disbelieving.

“I don’t let Harold do anything.”

“Well,” she said, peeling out of the parking garage and making a quick left, “that’s true enough. It’s usually the other way around.”

He sent her an innocent look, but she ignored it. Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up to the building—a storefront that seemed to have an office above it. John tapped his ear. “Harold, we’re outside. Where are you?”

No answer. “Harold?”

The building exploded.

The dot that had been blinking on his phone abruptly stopped, vanishing a millisecond later.

“ _Harold_?” he demanded, throwing open the car door and sprinting for the front door, covering his face when he ran through the smoke.

“Reese! _Reese_!” he heard Shaw yelling, but he ignored it, trying to wrench open the door, burning his hand in the process.

He felt a hand on his shoulder a moment later, tugging him back, and he swung without thinking, but Shaw had the advantage on him: she _was_ thinking. A quick, hard punch to the rib he’d bruised just a few days ago and he was in enough pain to let her drag him away from the building. 

“Did you just _run toward an exploding building_?” she snarled at him once they were back at the car, both coughing from the smoke.

“Harold was in there!”

“I know.” Her voice was as unwavering as ever but uncharacteristically soft. “John, this was professional—look at the blast pattern. He couldn’t have survived that.”

“Harold!” he yelled, unburned hand at his ear, but there was no answer, not even static. “Harold, answer me!”

“John,” she said again. “He’s gone.”

John doubled over, throwing up.

\---

They watched the building burn for what seemed like a long time. Some of it appeared to be happening in slow motion.

By rote, he noted what Shaw had, how professionally this had been done, how no one inside could have survived it. He silently let Shaw fix up his hand, still watching the building, wondering if there were any pieces of him left, any last remaining shreds of _Harold_.

“Firefighters and cops are going to be here soon, John,” Shaw said. “We should get going.”

He said nothing, just kept his eyes on the smoke billowing up and away, still wondering: how long would the investigation take, how long would it be before some investigator declared it a fluke gas line explosion, no casualties? How long would it be before Harold’s _death_ was not just forgotten, but never even remembered in the first place?

“John,” Shaw said again. “We need to go.”

He still said nothing, but he got in the car. 

Only Bear was at the Library when they got back there, effectively extinguishing John’s last tiny shred of doubt, the small piece of him that had been hoping, somehow, that it had all been some terrible mistake, that something had happened to force him back here, that he just hadn’t been able to communicate.

“We still need to wrap this up,” Shaw said to him, after a long moment of silence. “Alexa’s safe, but there’s nothing to stop Chambers and Michaels from pulling this again.”

John glanced around the room. It looked like it was still waiting for Harold, except Harold would never be coming back, not anymore.

“I can handle it from here,” Shaw went on, eventually. “I’ll watch Bear. You should go home. Get some rest.”

“Rest,” he said hollowly, closing his eyes, shaking his head. “Yeah. Rest.”

John stopped at a liquor store on his way home and bought as much whiskey as he could carry.

\---

A sharp knock on his door woke him up from a hazy, unsatisfying sleep, and he noticed he was still a little drunk. That suited him.

He stumbled to the door, opening it to reveal Carter. Her nose wrinkled as soon as she saw him. “Jesus, John. You smell like you did when we first met.”

He shrugged. “What’d you need, Carter?”

“Just to say I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Sam told me what happened—she got the bastards, if it makes any difference.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know. You know I’m here, whatever you need? Fusco and Sam too.”

“Thanks.” He tried to make it sound like he meant it, like anything meant anything anymore.

“Take it easy on the whiskey, huh?”

“Sure,” he said, but even drunk he could tell she didn’t believe that one.

Once she left, he glanced around his apartment, studying it. Every inch of it screamed Harold, from the bed he’d picked out— _a high-quality, firm mattress, just the way you prefer it, Mr. Reese_ —to the pots and pans hanging up in the kitchen. _I know you like to cook. These should suit your purposes._

He moved to pick up the half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting on the coffee table, downing a third of it at once.

\---

In his dreams, Harold visited him.

“You know this is your fault, Mr. Reese,” he always said, sitting perfectly still at the edge of his bed. “You know what happens to the people you care about—to the people you purport to _love_.”

Harold laughed bitterly.

“Did you really think you were allowed to love, Mr. Reese? Did you really think you were _capable_ —or _worthy_? If I had known my taking pity on you would go so far to your head, well, I certainly wouldn’t have bothered. Honestly, what could you have possibly been thinking?”

He always said the same thing, probably the only words he knew how to say. “I’m sorry, Harold. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Apology not accepted,” Harold always said, just before bursting into flames.

\---

His phone rang, pulling him out of a dream, and he tried to cling to it, to the image of Harold. It didn’t matter what he was saying, not if he was _there_ , but the phone was insistent. He answered it with a snappish, “What do you want?”

“It’s me, John,” said Zoe. “I heard what happened.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Same thing,” he muttered.

Zoe was silent for a long time. “You never told him, did you?”

That startled him, and he glanced at the phone in surprise. “Told him what?”

“John, don’t talk to me like I’m other people. You never told him you loved him, did you?”

“No,” John said. “No, I didn’t.”

“He felt the same, John. I guarantee it.”

For once, he knew Zoe was wrong, but he didn’t correct her. It was a nice illusion to hold onto.

\---

Someone was pounding on his door—or was that just his head?

It took him a few seconds to narrow it down; the pounding was definitely coming from his door, but it also wasn’t doing his head any favors.

“Open the damn door before I break it down,” Shaw yelled.

“It’s reinforced,” he called, but he opened it.

“I’d have found a way,” she said, taking a long look at him. “Come on, get in the shower. You’re getting cleaned up—we have a job to do.”

“I think I quit once my boss got blown up.”

“No,” she said. “Harold would come back from the dead and lecture me for the rest of eternity if I let you do that, so you’re getting in the shower if I have to bodily force you in there myself.”

He stared at her. “I’m not like you,” he said, after a moment. “Work’s not enough.”

“You’re enough like me,” she said gruffly. “It’s not enough, but it’s something.”

It wasn’t even that, not for him, not anymore, but after another few seconds, he nodded. “I’ll get in the shower.”

“I’ll wait.”

\---

The Library looked exactly the same—Bear even ran up to greet him as they walked in. He ended up lingering around him, sniffing curiously, nosing his hand.

Leon was sitting at the monitors. “Hey,” he said, voice subdued. “Just…no words, dude, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said, and turned to the glass board. “Who’s the number?”

Bear kept hovering nearby throughout the briefing, and Shaw kept watching him out of the corner of her eye. It might have annoyed him, before, but he couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t like it mattered. 

He could do this for a little while longer, he thought—someone would kill him sooner or later, probably faster than the whiskey would, in the state he was in. 

If it didn’t, well—he did have plenty of guns.

\---

“Hey, this was a good one,” Fusco said, awkwardly clapping him on the back. The second after he did he looked a little like he was wondering if he’d just poked a bear with a stick.

He thought that might have amused him, before. “Sure,” he said, and walked away.

It’d only been six days, but it felt like fifty years. He should’ve known this wasn’t going to be fast enough. He remembered how he’d felt after he found out about Jessica, and while Jessica had been his life, she had never been his _purpose_ , his _soul_.

The idea of waiting weeks, maybe months, for some idiot to get in a lucky shot—it was suddenly blindingly apparent that that just wasn’t going to work.

That settled it. Tomorrow night. It had to be tomorrow night.

\---

He decided to go for a walk—he wasn’t going to do it in his apartment, in the apartment Harold had given him. He would go for a walk and he’d find a secluded alley somewhere and he’d become just another nameless, faceless John Doe for the police to clean up.

There was a payphone on the street, and it rang as he passed it. Glancing up at a nearby security camera, he told it, “You’re not going to change my mind.”

The payphone rang again, somehow more insistently.

“You’ve got Shaw, Leon, Fusco, Carter, Zoe, even Root,” he told it. “You don’t need me.”

The payphone rang again.

“You’re as stubborn as Harold,” John said, and answered it. Computerized voices gave him the code that would translate to a number—he memorized it by habit, planning to text it to Shaw. At the end of the call, though, something different happened. There were two loud, shrill beeps and then _Harold’s voice_ filtered through heavy static. 

_“I don’t know what you expect from me,” Harold was saying._

_“How about who you work for, to start with?” The other voice was distorted._

_“I don’t work for anyone.”_

_“You might as well quit stalling. There’s no one coming to save you. They all think you’re dead.”_

_“No, they don’t. Not all of them.”_

_“You mean your pretty little guard dog? He’s taking it the worst of them. Look here—that’s a lot of whiskey he’s got, isn’t it?”_

_There was a long pause before Harold said again, blandly, “I don’t work for anyone.”_

The phone gave two more loud, shrill beeps, and the call ended.

He was about to call Shaw when his phone rang, her phone number coming up. “Harold’s alive,” he said as he answered, his voice not much more than a hoarse whisper, and she sucked in a breath.

“We know. Get back here now.”

\---

“The Machine called me,” he said, meeting Shaw outside the Library. “Gave me a number—”

“It’s Harold Wren’s number, probably the closest it could get,” Shaw interrupted. They walked inside.

“It had me listen to a recording too. Someone’s got Harold, they’re interrogating him.”

“That’s probably the same audio we got,” Shaw said, and he saw Leon working furiously at the monitors. She pointedly raised her voice. “Leon’s doing…something with it now. Hopefully finding us a lead sometime within the next decade.”

“Working as fast as I can!”

Shaw studied him, leading him down one of the stacks, away from Leon. Voice lowered, she asked, “Why did the Machine call you directly when it also contacted us? It hasn’t done that before.”

“I think it wanted to stop me from killing myself.”

She slanted a look his way. “Once we get Harold back, I’m telling him you said that. He’s never going to stop lecturing you.”

John felt a smile tug at his lips, the first one in what felt like half a century. “I can’t wait.”

\---

It took the better part of an hour for Leon to give them anything on the audio; he spent the entire time pacing the room, Bear following him as he did.

“Can you, uh, make him stop doing that?” he heard Leon whisper to Shaw, about thirty minutes in.

“Work faster,” she whispered back, flatly.

“From what I can tell, this audio was seriously encrypted. Did Finch send it? And if he did, did he need to retask two satellites to do it?”

“What’d you find, Leon?” he asked.

“It was recorded upstate, about two hours ago. Based on all the interference, I’m guessing he’s somewhere insulated—underground, maybe, or in the hull of a ship? Someplace like that. I’ve got a general idea of his location, but I’m trying to narrow it down some more.”

“Send it to my phone,” John said, grabbing Bear’s leash. “I’m going.”

“We’re going,” Shaw corrected, following him out the door.

\---

They stopped briefly at his apartment to load up on some more weaponry, but then they were on their way. The drive was supposed to take roughly three hours, but John figured Shaw would cut it down to about two and a half.

They spent the time more or less in companionable silence, the only sound Bear’s breathing whenever he took a break from leaning his head out the window. About halfway in, Shaw said, “They’ve had him a week.”

“I know.”

“He could be in bad shape.”

“I know.”

“We don’t know how many there are going to be waiting for us.”

“I know that too.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You ready for this?”

“I’m not going to be aiming at anyone’s kneecaps, Shaw.”

That earned him a quick, sharp nod. “Good.”

He liked that they were on the same page.

\---

Leon texted him when they were about ten minutes outside the city, giving him directions to a fairly large shipyard; it was on the outskirts of the city, so it was only an extra few minutes to get there. Shaw stopped the car just a little ways outside the entrance, turning to him. “We should walk the rest of the way.”

“I’ll get the weapons out of the trunk.”

“I’ll get the dog,” she said, grabbing Bear’s leash and leading him out of the car.

He opened the trunk, unzipping his duffle and pulling out several guns. Two he holstered on himself; two more he handed over to his left, where Shaw promptly grabbed them. He grabbed a couple tear-gas grenades and moved them to an easier-to-reach pocket before zipping the bag again, slinging it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Leon,” he said, tapping his ear. “We’re here. Do you have eyes?”

“Ish?” he said, and John made a low sound, almost a growl. “I mean yes! It’s just—these people, whoever they are, they’re good. I’ve got to do a lot just to stay off their radar.”

“So do it. Do you see anyone?”

“Nah, not yet; place looks mostly deserted.”

“Keep your eyes peeled,” he said to Shaw. “Leon says they’re professional. We might be expected.”

They slowly made their way around shipping containers, until Leon suddenly yelled, “Stop! There’s a few cameras right ahead of you. Take one more step and they’ll see you.”

“Maybe you should knock out the surveillance cameras, Leon,” John said, through gritted teeth.

“Dude, I’m trying, but I told you, they’re good. Anyway, if I knock them out, they’re probably just going to send people to come check it out.”

“We can handle that,” he said, eyes on the gun in his hand.

“Okay. Cameras are gone. Keep an eye out.”

They didn’t have to wait long; they heard commotion a few hundred yards to the north and then the approach of footsteps; between him and Shaw, they were dead before they turned the corner. None of them even got a shot off.

“Well, now we’re definitely expected,” Shaw said. “This way, come on.”

He followed her. The commotion ahead of them was getting louder, more insistent—obviously, someone wasn’t happy about their party being crashed. They stayed crouched behind another shipping container, and there it was: a medium-sized ship that looked like it had seen better days.

“Harold’s in there,” he said.

“I see at least five more guards,” she said.

“Harold’s in there,” he said again.

“I’m guessing there are at least five more we don’t see, maybe ten.”

“Harold’s in there.”

“John, don’t you think I fucking know that? But it’s two against fifteen, unless you have a better idea?”

John pulled out his phone. He tapped his ear again. “Call me,” he said.

“Huh?” asked Leon.

“Not you, Leon. Call me,” he said again.

“Dude, who are you—”

“We need your help. Call me.”

His phone rang.

“I have a job for you, for a change,” he said as he answered it. “Anything electronic, anything you can access, cell phones, computers, cameras, lights, whatever—neutralize it.” 

The static hummed heavily in his ear: agreement.

“On my mark,” he said, unzipping the pocket on his bag and pulling out the tear-gas grenades. He handed them to Shaw. “Keep the guys contained on that side of the ship,” he said, indicating where he meant. It would give him a clear path to get below. 

“If I’m covering you, try not to be too much of an idiot,” she said.

He glanced at Bear, ordering him to stay put—he’d be backup—then glanced back at up at Shaw. She nodded once, tightly, and he said, “One, two, three—go.”

The overall amount of commotion increased as whoever was inside reacted to their equipment running haywire. They got close enough for Shaw to throw the first grenade, and neither of them hesitated before shooting anyone who tried to get in their way. He made his way down to the lower levels; Shaw hung back, covering him. He shot down two more guys on his way, heading down a long, narrow hallway, leading to a very secluded part of the ship. 

When he reached the end, he pushed the door open. A tall blond guy was standing over Harold, who was tied to a chair, holding a gun to his head.

“Drop your weapons or this time he really will be dead.”

“Hey,” John said, perfectly genial. “Is that an earpiece?”

The effect was instantaneous—as soon as he said it, he heard the loud shriek of feedback, even from feet away. The guy clawed at his ear, and John swooped in, shoving him back against the wall by his neck. “You’re lucky,” he told him. “I only have time to shoot you.”

“You? I’ve watched you. You’re _domesticated_ , admit it! I don’t think you have it in you—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence.

Hurrying to Harold’s side, he got him untied, carefully checking him over for injuries, watching his pupils for reaction. “You okay, Harold?”

“I’m suffering from dehydration more than anything,” Harold said, glancing over to where his captor had slid, lifeless, to the floor, blood trickling down from the bullet wound at his temple. There was a hard line at Harold’s mouth, a dark current in his eyes. “How long has it been, Mr. Reese? How long did you think I was dead?”

He swallowed over the lump in his throat. “A week. It’s been a week, Harold. Somehow it took the Machine that long to find you.”

“Their technology is impressive, I must admit.” A final glance back at the man on the floor, and then Harold stood—John instinctively helped him gain his balance. “He deserved worse, John,” he said, voice quiet, full of ice.

John couldn’t help but grip more tightly at Harold’s arm as he helped him out of the room.

\---

By the time they got back up to the deck of the ship, it looked like Shaw had everything under control. Some of them had even run toward where Bear had been waiting, so he had gotten to join in on the action as well.

Bear immediately perked up when they were within scent distance, racing over to him and to Harold and crowding around Harold, tail wagging.

“ _Braaf_ , Bear,” Harold said, patting his head deliberately.

“Harold,” Shaw said, nodding at him. “Good to see you alive.”

“Good to be alive, Ms. Shaw. Tell me—where did they send you? They showed me footage of the building they blew up, but I couldn’t quite place it.”

“It was a storefront. Lower east side, abandoned. Where were you, since you obviously weren’t inside?”

“About ten blocks away,” he said. “As I was telling Mr. Reese, their technology is impressive. It wouldn’t have been a difficult feat to spoof my phone’s coordinates.”

“So who the hell are they?”

“That I don’t quite know—but I will. I know enough to find out. And I know this was only a fraction of their larger operation. Some sort of private, domestic, elite group of hackers. Our activities put us on their radar, I suppose. More specifically, my activities.”

“We should get going,” John said. “We’ll need to get you checked out, Harold.”

“I told you I’m fine, Mr. Reese,” Harold said, but his breathing was more labored than it ought to have been, and John could see the dark circles of exhaustion underneath his eyes.

“Then a checkup won’t take long. I’ll call Maddie on our way home.”

\---

“I’d like to go to the library,” Harold said, as soon as they finished up with Maddie. She had confirmed that what Harold really needed was a lot of fluids and a lot of rest. While John was glad it wasn’t anything more serious, he still wasn’t feeling any particular inclination to let Harold out of his sight, preferably ever again.

“You heard the doctor, Harold. Rest. Fluids. I’m taking you home with me.”

“Honestly, Mr. Reese, I think that’s an overreaction. I’d like to get a head start on uncovering the rest of this organization.”

“You can use my laptop,” he said.

“Very well,” Harold said through a sigh. “Would you agree to one of my safe houses? I have several with setups that are better equipped to the task than your laptop.”

John thought about arguing the point, but quickly realized he just didn’t have the energy. “Fine. Where am I going?”

Harold told him without hesitation, and John determinedly kept his eyes locked on the road.

\---

This particular safe house turned out to be a luxurious brownstone in an upper class neighborhood of Brooklyn. John made Harold wait in the car with Bear while he cleared the entire structure and scoped out each of the fire escapes.

“I trust you’re satisfied?” Harold asked, once he returned for him.

The inside was as luxurious and perfectly-appointed as the outside. He tried to decide which of Harold’s covers lived here—it didn’t seem quite enough for Crane or Partridge, and besides, neither of them seemed likely to live outside Manhattan. He wondered if maybe it belonged to one he didn’t know yet.

“Sit down before you get started. I’m making you something to eat,” he told Harold, opening the fridge; he was pleased to find it was well-stocked. Pouring him a generous glass of orange juice, he set it in front of him. “Drink this.”

Harold did pick up the glass and take a long drink, so John continued going through the contents of the kitchen, pulling out any cooking implements and ingredients he might need. Harold remained unusually silent through the entire process, and when he finished with his orange juice, John wordlessly poured him another glass. 

“Thank you, John,” Harold said finally, softly, meeting his eyes. He sighed heavily. “I apologize if I seem…less than grateful. It’s simply that the longer I wait, the harder it will be to find all of these people.”

“They’re not going to come after you again, Harold. They’d have to go through me.” 

Harold blinked, almost as if that thought hadn’t occurred to him. “I’m not concerned about my safety.”

“Then why—”

“John, they made you believe I was _dead_. For a _week_.” His tone was as hard as ice, and the current he’d seen earlier was back, and stronger now, flashing like lightning behind his glasses. “That is unacceptable. I have absolutely no intention of letting their organization remain intact.”

John swallowed, abruptly needing to lean against the island for support, the past week’s accumulation of bone-deep exhaustion slipping through the cracks. “I know they showed you pictures of how I—I’m sorry, Harold. When I thought you were—I _couldn’t_.”

“You couldn’t?” Harold prompted, and it was like something in John flipped a switch; he felt himself surging forward and kissing Harold, hard and eager, touching him, feeling him. He was there, he was close. He was _alive_.

“John,” Harold said softly, against his mouth, and John pulled away like he’d been burned.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“John, come here,” Harold said firmly, catching his wrist and pulling him back in. Harold kissed him this time, tenderly, thoroughly, and it made his whole body ache with every last bit of pent-up need he’d ever possessed. 

He had to breathe in deeply once Harold pulled away, almost gasping for breath, gripping onto Harold’s shirt for dear life.

“John,” Harold said again, gently, stroking his hair. “Oh, John.”

John had been sure he no longer knew how to cry, but apparently the ability remained somewhere, long-buried in some dark, dank corner of his mind; sob after sob tore through him, until all he could do was hold onto Harold, coughing, hiccupping, dry heaving.

Harold’s arms stayed tight around him throughout, a solid, sure presence, a promise: _I’m here._

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Presumed character death, but thoroughly believed for a good chunk of the story; suicidal thoughts and plans; alcoholism; depression; some manifestation of PTSD; violence typical to the show and a little bit beyond.
> 
> And, for the record, there will probably be a sequel. Now that John has had a taste of experiencing what it's like thinking that Harold is dead, he's not going to be so content to let Harold get away with allowing Grace to believe it. Goddammit, brain.


End file.
